Review: The Night Circus

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.”

I love this book more than I can possibly say, so much that it is a mystery how long it took me to pick it up. Many times I discarded it or pushed it aside while influenced by the ammount of mixed reviews it had, people seemed to either love it or hate it; and then there was the fact that I didn't feel especially drawn to it. But oh how wrong I was.

“The past stays on you the way powdered sugar stays on your fingers. Some people can get rid of it but it’s still there, the events and things that pushed you to where you are now.”

Celia and Marco are rival magicians in a competition that was set up when they were merely kids by their mentors, the background to which is Le Cirque des Rêves, a place that is at times more dream than reality; populated with fortune tellers, contortionists and acrobats as well as with tents full of impossibly magical things like gardens made entirely of ice, a jungle of moving origami animals and a whishing tree lit up by a thousand candles.

“Everything I have done, every change I have made to that circus, every impossible feat and astounding sight, I have done for her.”

The prose is both detailed and elegant, entwining different character's perspectives and timelines as the competition affects both the Circus and their lives. There is a dream-like quality to the story that brought up a smile on my face every time I opened this book. In a way I think it reminded me why I like to read so much, presenting such an enchanting idea packed with detailed descriptions that translate into flavors and sights that are almost impossible to come up with in real life.

But what made me most happy I think was the incussion of the rêveurs, people that follow the Circus around, chasing that longing for adventure, magic or just a life out of the ordinary that sometimes takes place in one's heart. That is at least what drives me to books most of the time, a chance to explore what in any other way might be impossible for me to experience, a different life or world where if only for a moment I can live and be part of a story so different from my quiet little life.

To wrap it up I can only say that it has been such a long time since a book reached out to me in the way The Night Circus did, it is truly enchanting. My only regret is perhaps that I will never be able to physically visit it, but the book I will definitely re-read a hundred times.